Happy Birthday, Tessie!

Today is my daughter's 4th birthday. Four years old! How amazing it has been to have a front row seat watching her learn and grow over the past 4 years.

A few months ago I started thinking about what kind of party we should have. Tess and I discussed a few different possible themes (a Candyland party, an Alice in Wonderland tea party, a chocolate party), and then I asked her, "Ok, sweetie, which one would you like?" Without even having to think about it, she said, "A princess party!" But wait, what happened to all the other themes we had talked about (and that I was hoping for because I had started planning in my head)? Nope, she had made up her mind and was set on a princess theme.

So, I have to come clean here and admit that I'm not what you would call a princess person. Honestly, I'm a bit mystified at how I managed to have a little girl who loves princesses so much, but there it is. So I was a bit apprehensive trying to settle on how to approach this party. Of course I wanted to give her what she wanted, I just wasn't sure I could truly embrace the sparkly glitteryness of it all and do it justice, in true Paula-party style. But luckily, on a recent visit, my stepmom bought Tess a book called Princess Pearl, A Birthday Ball, which is all about a little girl who, on her birthday, gets invited to an under-the-sea birthday bash where she is the princess of honor, and she gets a special necklace. I asked Tess if we could do an under-the-sea princess party, and she loved the idea. Perfect!

I wrote a poem, as I've done for her invitations almost every year (1st birthday) (3rd birthday)

It's a magical world under the sea
Full of princesses, sweet as can be.
Please join us as we share the lore
Tessa Jane is turning 4!

I wanted to make the invitations somehow shell-like, and to also incorporate a pearl into them. So I created a shell shape that would be relatively simple to cut out (Sort of -- I made my husband promise next year to remind me how long it took to make these. I'm sure it won't do any good, but it's worth a shot. Thankfully I only had to make like 20 of them. Or perhaps I'll have to just buy a silhouette machine.), glued the pearl on the inside, and cut a hole in the top piece for it to go through when closed. It was a little (ok, a lot) more complicated than that, but I've since blocked most of it out in order to move on -- just like with childbirth, the end result justified the difficulty. :)

Although I ended up hand delivering most of them, there were a few that needed to be mailed, and I wanted them to have a sturdy box to live in, so I used these from Paper Source. I glued sandpaper to the bottom of the box, and found some seaweed-looking plastic greenery vines at Michael's which I cut down to size. I then hot-glued shells on the inside of the box, onto the sandpaper, for the invitation to sit on.

I made a label with each guest's name on it in the same shell shape, and stuck a pearl sticker onto the front, to mimic the invitation, then tied it underneath with a ribbon. I incorporated this shell shape throughout the rest of the party as well, but that's for the next post. Stay tuned!